It is strange being a Stay-at-home-Dad. For instance a chant of "ihopeiwinatoaster, ihopeiwinatoaster" floating up the basement steps. My nearly seven [eight] (now nine) ((now ten)) [[eleven]] {twelve} year-old twin boys concoct, devise, arrange, invent, write, say, imagine and dream the damndest things. Things that make me wonder. Ideas and stories that I may think on for days after I encounter them. I'll share some here. They made me do this.
Essential. Childhood. Nonsense. Explained.

Friday, March 27, 2015

What Was Revealed

You know, boys, there is a lot I am
sorry for. I guess that is sort of a sweeping statement, isn't it?
I don't mean for anything I've done to you or that sort of thing.
No, it's just that, well, I wish things were different.

For instance, I am sorry that you get
music in such an generic and soulless format. You hear it on the
internet and through the airwaves on radio stations at the pool and
in the car, distant, tinny, filtered, compressed. But, you don't
hold it in your hands, see it, own it.

When I was a boy everyone, I mean
everyone, had records. Pop music was on affordable 45s and
long-playing albums, often in stereo, were what our parents and
siblings all played. The music came in paper sleeves and you had to
carefully pull out the disc of vinyl and put it on something called a
"turntable" and drop a needle on to it and give it a listen
on speakers that knew how to make some noise, most bigger than
breadboxes. You had to actively do all this... and, that made all
the difference in the world.

I remember getting the new Bob Dylan
album - Blood on The Tracks - like it was yesterday. I remember
eagerly tearing off the cellophane around it, throwing that aside and
pulling the inner sleeve out, hoping for "liner notes" so I
could learn as much about the music as I could. I bought the
songbook to the album along with it and sat on my bed and listened to
it on a portable turntable that sounded better than the speakers on a
laptop or tablet today. I searched the words for meaning, looked up
references to Romantic French Poets in the World Book Encyclopedia
just down the hall, in the den. I met Hurricane Carter and fell in
love with Lily and Rosemary
and probably the Jack of Hearts as well. I sat and learned, with a
shiny new guitar in my lap, the truth about love songs, their
structure and the sheer weight of their necessity.

As I reflect on it, I was probably a
couple of years older than you, maybe three - and that's a lot in boy
years - but that's not my point. I was gifted to grow up in an era
where music was so prevalent and good. No, I am not making a
judgment on the music of the era, that is not for me to do, and,
well, I have eclectic (read questionable) taste in these things.
It's just that it was such a common experience for us. Everyone sat
and listened to 45s and the newest John Denver or Jim Croce album.
We played, and got to know, even chose, the soundtrack of our lives.
We weren't forced to look for it underneath a new car commercial or
search for good music on the internet or radio through a barrage of
commercials and crap. The music was right there, always.

We tripped over stacks of music, we
packed album after album into apple crates, or, even better, peach
crates - I don't know why. Our tables and desks and beds were strewn
with liner notes, the faces of the artists we loved peered up at us
and psychedelic covers of rock band albums, the twisting words of the
lyrics and notes, made us wonder and hope for a day when we
understood them.

I remember playing the song American
Pie over and over on my little portable player. My friend JB and I
had it in our head to figure out the words. The song is so damn long
it took both sides of the 45 just to get through it. We'd stop and
start the needle over and over again, finally getting all the words
down. I cannot begin to impress upon you how very wrong
we got those words. We didn't know who Jumping Jack Flash was let
alone James Dean; we knew nothing of plane crashes or Buddy Holly or
Jagger or Woodstock. I played that song wrong for a dozen years
I'd say, until people grew tired of hearing it.

Maybe
ten years ago I found the real lyrics online and decided I'd try to
play it again. Once again I struggled with the words, understanding
them for the first time took me back to when I sat, spiral-bound
notebook in hand, writing down the wrong words as JB stopped and
started the turntable. We were happy and young and naive and singing
about Chevys and whiskey and rye and a generation lost in space,
oblivious to the context, happy in the moment. That was in late in
1971 and I was ten.

The world back then
was so sensual - I mean involving the senses. I fear we aren't
giving our sons that so much anymore. I was never so happy, for
years and years, as I was when I opened that new album, the smell and
look and feel of it was everything right then and there. It had a
wholeness to it, a wholeness that I think is fragmented these days.
The boys listen to a song here, watch a video there, but - and this
is why I am sorry for it is my fault - but they never experience that
music through time and space, through taste and feel, that was so
common when I was younger.

I should work to
change that.

It's funny, this
all started out as a list of things I wanted to apologize for to the
boys. Mostly technologies, sensibilities. Simple things like, I'm
sorry the bats aren't wood anymore, or, sorry there is so very little
KoolAid. Stuff both silly and profound, funny and deep, sad and,
well, sadder.

You see, when I
started thinking about this all, outlined it, made notes, thought of
how I might structure and format it I looked at all those "sorrys"
and saw them all as one thing, they distilled down to one thought.

I'm gonna pause
briefly here before I tell you what was revealed. I believe that
life must be examined. We are obligated as humans to think deeply,
profoundly. The very basics of our lives exist because someone
thought about language and justice and wheels and fire and love and
suffering and war and peace and literally everything else. We owe it to our heritage as people to
consider our lives.

We think, therefore
we are is...

I truly believe
this. The thing is... sometimes it hurts. Sometimes it takes us
places we would rather not go - sadness, inadequacy, loneliness,
pointlessness. That's alright. Joy and faith and tenderness and purpose all balance
it out.

I'm sorry I am
your father.

It's alright...
really. I understand why I thought this. I'm old and grumpy and
borderline misanthropic and afraid and, well, a little weird. But,
do I believe it. I'll let you be the judge of that. But, I wasn't
afraid of the thought. That's what's important.

Fatherhood is big -
thematically. I am willing to think about it.

Listen, I know
saying I'm sorry that I am Nick and Zack's dad is stupid. Words
don't exist to explain the joy a father feels in having children.
Long paragraph short: I'm not sorry.

But, I thought
about it. I thought about regrets and opportunities lost. I thought
about providing and being available and paternity leave and money and
heart and hearth and the future and the past. I flipped through
memories and afterthoughts and moments lost and time and now.

I'm glad I did.
That one moment of doubt, that one thought of hopelessness, well,
has, is, making me a better father.

Anyway, I did this
so...

...how sorry can I be.

Remember, we get to think about stuff. Zack's bear also made this helpful graphic:

"think mOAr thotS" Nick must've helped him with the spelling.

Think more thoughts.

Zack went down to feed the cats the other morning. He had his bear, Bear-Bear, under his arm and set him down to get the food and then left him there. Face down on the cement. It looked like a crime scene and, sadly, my first thought was to orange chalk a circle around the poor guy and tell Z there's been an incident. I picked the old fellow up and was trying to console him as best one can an inanimate object. I looked at his face.

I little piece of foil, a wrapper or tinsel or something, stuck to his face like a tear. And I wondered if I'd feel as sad when someday I realized that the boys might forget me for a moment. It was an overwhelming notion and I let my thoughts go with it. Fathers and sons, sons and fathers.

Thanks for coming 'round again. I suppose you'll flit off to some other cyberstop. Cool. Hey, don't forget to think. Look deep into yourself. You're allowed.